State Dept. apologizes for promoting Muslim cleric who backed killing of US soldiers

May 2, 2014: US Secretary of State John Kerry speaks during a press conference at the US embassy in Juba, South Sudan. (ap)

The State Department’s Counter Terrorism (CT) Bureau apologized on Tuesday for promoting a controversial Muslim scholar whose organization has reportedly backed Hamas and endorsed a fatwa authorizing the murder of U.S. soldiers in Iraq.

The apology came on the heels of a Friday Washington Free Beacon report detailing the CT Bureau’s promotion of Sheik Abdallah Bin Bayyah, the vice president of a radical Muslim scholars group that was founded by a radical Muslim Brotherhood leader who has called “for the death of Jews and Americans.”

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Bin Bayyah himself is one of several clerics who endorsed a 2004 fatwa, or religious order, endorsing the killing of U.S. soldiers fighting in Iraq.

The CT Bureau apologized multiple times on Tuesday for tweeting in favor of Bin Bayyah and promoting an article on his website.

“This should not have been tweeted and has since been deleted,” the CT Bureau tweeted at users who expressed anger over the original message.